I have to say that I'm not convinced it would work well on the iphone. The larger viewing area afforded to the iPad is pretty critical for this game.
I get this in reply to almost every iPad or Windows game I have ever suggested for an iPhone port, regardless of whether the game in question is actually dependant on a large screen area. It has become the route reply, since it is easily within cognitive reach, and it is equally easy to assume certain games will not work on small screens. Most of the time, there is nothing about those games that actually would demand a large screen. Luckily, many of these games have now been ported to the iPhone, with great success. (When someone suggests an iPhone port of a Mac OS X/Windows/console/iPad classic, the standard reply so often seems to be to deem the project impossible, because of control issues and screen size. With absolutely no regard to all the thousands of ports once deemed impossible, and then ported successfully, even if many of those ports are FAR more tricky than the game in question. I've even heard this argument for games that are a natural fit for touchscreen devices, such as turn-based RPGs with little demands on hardware power or screen real estate.) The truth is that ANY game can be successfully adapted, as long as enough work and care is put into optimizing controls and interface. Screen size and viewing area is never an absolute limitation, only a matter of clever UI and control design (and the associated time and money). Another truth is that a game can become a success and justify the time and money spent on porting, even if the porting work is not optimal. In Aquaria's case, I see absolutely nothing that would make the larger viewing area critical. More pleasant, certainly, but that goes for almost any iOS game in existence. But critical enough that the game wouldn't became a smash hit on the iPhone? Not even close And I'd much rather play an Aquaria with severe screen real estate issues on my iPhone, than none at all. (Though I am convinced there would be no such issues if the port is good enough.) And come on, there are plenty of games with FAR greater requirements on screen real estate than Aquaria that are doing so very well on the iPhone... (A friend of mine has had the same long-running discussion with the creators of Texastic, and the devs of another full-featured HTML editor for iPad. The devs kept saying "We don't feel comfortable coding on a screen as small as the iPhone's." My friend kept trying to explain to them that as long as there is a market and demand for a fully featured HTML editor for the iPhone, they could earn good money, in spite of not being comfortable using their product themselves. Luckily, at last, just recently, the devs of Textastic decided to listen, and thus we will soon have the first text editor for iPhone with syntax highlighting and colouring, and UTF-8 support...) With everything from online RTS games, realtime MMOs, online beat-em-ups, multiplayer 4X games, competitive multiplayer fps games, titles with extremely complex interfaces (the First Wave version of Dungeon Defenders), and even a twitch-based space shooter MMO, all genres at some point deemed not fit for mobile devices but now doing so very well on that very platform, we are well past the "can't adapt interface/gameplay to small screen" argument (Last time I ran across this reply from a developer was with Small World, a game that would work extremely well with pull-down menus on an iPhone screen.) So, unless developers judge that a certain game would not actually sell well enough to justify the porting process, or that they just don't care enough , I can see no reason ever to release a game for iPad alone.
This game woud work fine on the iPhone...it may require considerable work on the part of the developer (to port it), and perhaps they have a 'principle' here where they think it wouldn't be optimal to play the game on a smaller device.
You could create an iPhone version. But it simply wouldn't be the same game. That's the reason why so many PS1 and 2 games fail when ported to the PSP: the gameplay and content are there, but the feel is completely different. Some games can survive the change in scale, but others can't. In the case of Aquaria, one key feature is the epic scale of the levels. Your character is tiny compared to the massive spaces he inhabits. The controls take advantage of this by buildings a lot of nuance into how far from your character you tap -- after a few minutes you feel in total command of your movement. On an iPhone that simply wouldn't work:you would have to pull in a lot closer, making the game feel claustrophobic instead of expansive. The resulting game might be worth playing, but it woudln't be Aquaria .
I agree. The game could technically be ported to the iPhone but it wouldn't be the same. Most games are great on both platform while some work only well on one or the other. Aquaria belongs to the latter category imo.
The feel that a game evokes is subjective, and very hard to predict . The "epic" (an expression nearly as misused in the game industry as "bland" and "generic", dontyathink? ) scale of the levels in Aquaria never appealed particularly to me, and I never saw it as a key feature. Never even thought about it until you mentioned it in this thread Instead, I was drawn in by the peculiar backstory, setting and metaplot, the song theme, and some of the novel controls, all of which would translate very well to the iPhone. So, what constitutes "Aquaria" for some (or possibly the majority of) players is not for neither me nor you to decide (and I'm sure you recognize that determining the objective defining qualities of any product built partially on emotional and subjective reception is tricky semantic and epistemological ground ) , and might very well remain intact in an iPhone port. And even if the epic scale was a major concern in development, there is no way to accurately predict that the effect of Aquaria on a smaller screen will be as you describe (unless you have direct experience of a very similar case, in which I yield . I could very well imagine a smaller screen leading to an even GREATER sense of scale, thanks to the simple fact that less of the levels can be seen. But yeah, I do agree that if the final iPhone product is somehow no longer Aquaria, it might still be worth playing. All the more reason for the devs to try their hands at an iPhone port It is interesting how many agree with certainty to a sentiment that has yet to be tried in practice
thanks for the enthusiasm everyone! It's awesome to see such positive support for Alec & Derek's awesome game I wanted to address a couple of common questions real quick: 1 - This version has ALL the content of the PC versions, which means it definitely takes up at least 300MB, possibly more, and it even has some new features! 2 - While we've already started talking about how to get the game to work on iPhone, we don't have any concrete plans at the moment. It all depends on the prototypes, when we get time to do them, but it's something we'd love to see. We just want to make sure it's done right is all; between the size of the artwork and the tendency of fingers to cover the screen, a straight port isn't a good option, but we are brainstorming variant control schemes and other ideas. If we DO add iPhone support later, we will probably just make the iPad version universal. Oh and we also have a thread going on the official Aquaria iPad forums for iPad wallpapers: http://www.bit-blot.com/forum/index.php?topic=4241.0 I have the big starfish one right now and I'm diggin it. Thanks again everybody
What I said is all subjective, of course. I think I was trying to explain why I personally felt that an iPhone version would be problematic. Obviously the original developer disagrees, and I look forward to seeing how they solve the problem of making the game work on a smaller screen .
Yeah, that all opinions are subjective goes without saying When discussing the market viability of an iPhone port, the consensus of the target audience is what matters. When you chimed into the discussion I assumed you believed your personal feelings would be fairly ubiquitouis, and felt the need to point out that they might not be Well, regardless, all your points made much sense to me, and might perhaps aid the devs in resolving how to realize the port. Great news! The list of games I'd like to play on my iPhone as much as Aquaria is very small, possibly only consisting of Civ IV Perhaps I've grown cynical in assuming there will be no iPhone ports of awesome iPad releases, when most games actually do grace both platforms eventually... (I blame the Small World devs, just as I blame them in my cynicism in assuming great board games will NOT see asynchronous online support )
I just wanted to stop back and say that I am really enjoying the game. The controls work very well and are well implemented. The graphics look very clean and are bright, crisp, and fluid even on an iPad 1. The gameplay is very fun as you are exploring new area you will find new abilities, recipes, recipe ingredients, and other items. Aquaria is truly a polished gem waiting to be discovered, probably my game of the year.
I'm not far enough to say, but the play time is estimated to be 20 - 28 hours (if you explore the game world). I don't see the game being particularly challenging (unless you get lost easily), but it may get tougher later on.
Glad to hear the game may make its way to the iPhone/iPod Touch. I figured if this was a PSP game as well then the screen real estate shouldn't matter that much. Looks great!
Mmmm that is definitely a fair question - that "3D" version that went elsewhere recently would be interesting to have. It hit the MAS recently, but that was a bit of a shock after its having been FREE for years! As for Aquaria, I'm having a hard time imagining the control system. I'm thinking some of the bosses would be pretty hard using touch (e.g. boiler room, which was already plenty hard enough), but I'm not even sure quite why I think it. I guess just stock up on more healing foods . Oh well, if the next iPad isn't the one to go retina, I guess it'll be quite a while still before I get a chance to try!
I doubt we'll see a resolution bump beyond 1920x1080, and even that is doubtful for a few years. The iPad's native resolution is fantastic, provided you don't hold it close to your nose.
Yeah, if they were to add retina display to the ipad3, they would need to quadruple the processing power just to be the same as an ipad2. Four times as many pixels equals four times as much RAM and processor power, the batteries wouldn't last 3 hours.
Currently NOT at the moment due to screen issues. It's going to re-design back the whole game structure.
Checked the appstore when I got home to see this has released, to my delight, I simply love it. What more could you ask for, for the price of $5? The best money I've spent on the appstore in awhile. The graphics are stunning. The sound effects and music.. Just amazing. Overall, I will be playing this game to the very end.
